There was one fortyish [ed. note: Michael too is fortyish] female consciencious objector who scheduled a competing girls-nite-out rather than discuss why the Rabbit’s internal monologue several times refers to Mrs. Rabbit as a “dumb mutt”.

Otherwise, and I am barely spinning this, the group was, to quote [my wife and her mother], “blown away.” I think part of the reason is that Rabbit at Rest finds Updike at the height of his powers – several reviews indicate some sort of perfection of Updike’s craft in this novel.

As the visual artist / art historian in the group put it, “he notices everything”, and as others noticed, the way he jumps from Rabbit licking candied crumbs off his hand “like an anteater” in one sentence and contemplating a plane crash in the next, the sudden, realistic yet jarring changes of scope, are fascinating to follow. The run on sentences are gorgeous and also realistic.

The discussion was on point from beginning to end, and many people were compelled to read favorite passages, which almost never happens.

I was going to dub the new financial plan TANF 2 — temporary assistance to needy financial institutions, without, you know, any of the means-testing or work requirements involved when poor people get help.

Yes, we’ve gone from bad, to worse, to BARF. Enjoy, darlings! Sometimes I feel like I’ll never be done mucking out this darned stall–but I can’t expect the poor, dear animals who $h!t the place up to clean it up now, can I?

Don’t thank me–just send the Benjamins straight to Historiann, c/o American Express, Potterville, Colorado. I’ll swing by the P.O. on my next ride into town. Toodeloo, friends, and I’ll see you tomorrow (or the next time I get a bee in my 10-gallon hat, which probably won’t be too long after that first cuppa joe in the morning.)

A neighbor of mine has asked me if I have any advice on good biographies for her book club. I’m thinking something published by a trade press, American or European history, and well-written and interesting enough to keep intelligent non-specialists engaged. Since this is a women’s book club, biographies of women would be especially useful, but all suggestions are welcome.

In a quick e-mail to my neighbor, I recommended Laurel Thather Ulrich’s A Midwife’s Tale(1990), and Blanche Wiesen Cook’s Eleanor Roosevelt, vol. I. (1992). (I probably should have warned her that the Cook bio is 600+ pages!) My guess is that this book club will want to be able to read and hear the voice of the subject, so while I admire Camilla Townsend’s accomplishments as a historian in Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma(2004), and her Malintzin’s Choices: An Indian Woman in the Conquest of Mexico (2006), my guess is that an audience of non-experts will feel that the subject of their book is rather elusive.

I am so glad other people are writing interesting things and posting them on the open-source, non peer-reviewed world wide timewasting web today! Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to click the following links and enjoy the wisdom, mystery, and pathos of it all:

Pathos: More men getting pink slips than women in this economic depression. ZOMG the workforce may have a majority of women! The good news is that because it’s men out of work, people will respond to this as a real emergency, lest “[a] deep and prolonged recession . . . change not only household budgets and habits; it may also challenge longstanding gender roles.” Well, that’s quite unlikely, as the article later notes:

When women are unemployed and looking for a job, the time they spend daily taking care of children nearly doubles. Unemployed men’s child care duties, by contrast, are virtually identical to those of their working counterparts, and they instead spend more time sleeping, watching TV and looking for a job, along with other domestic activities.

. . . . . . . . . .

Historically, the way couples divide household jobs has been fairly resistant to change, says Heidi Hartmann, president and chief economist at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

Do tell! Anyway, I’m off to find those tail-scalpin’ scalawags, for probably only 80 cents on the dollar. Ride hard, but don’t put your horses away wet, friends.

Family historian Stephanie Coontz has an op-ed in the New York Times today, “Till Children Do Us Part.” It’s less historical than sociological, suggesting that in order to overcome the inevitable stress that children put on a relationship, parents should take time together away from their child/ren in order to preserve a happy relationship. Coontz also suggests that “traditional” households are unhappier than feminist ones:

Marital quality also tends to decline when parents backslide into more traditional gender roles. Once a child arrives, lack of paid parental leave often leads the wife to quit her job and the husband to work more. This produces discontent on both sides. The wife resents her husband’s lack of involvement in child care and housework. The husband resents his wife’s ingratitude for the long hours he works to support the family.

Gee–who ever would have predicted that? What I wonder is, on what basis did people ever think that adding children to a household decreased marital tensions? From what I’ve observed, even when a child is dearly, dearly wanted and loved, ze creates a lot more work for everyone (as well as, eventually, a lot more fun, but at first it’s just a lot of work.)

Inside Higher Ed ran a story this week about the demise of Miami University’s independent NPR-affiliated radio station, WMUB. Historiann lived in Oxford from 1997-2001, owned a home there, and was a responsible public radio member/listener. We listened to the station all day long–even “Mama Jazz” in the evenings. I volunteered to answer phones on the early morning shift for their fund drives.

I understand that in these lean budgetary years, programs that are not “mission-critical” will get the ax. My question is this: why are college sports teams ever seen as “mission-critical?” The marquee sports–men’s football and men’s basketball–involve only a tiny handful of students who are unrepresentative of the student body on most campuses (since women are the majority of college students.) Why not just drop out of the NCAA and turn them into club sports, as so many women’s teams and other men’s teams are? Early in this decade, Miami University built a fancy new academic building down by their playing fields that is only for the use of student athletes. It was apparently too much for their preciousnesses to hike up to a classroom building or the library to get their homework done! Why the superstar treatment? I know it’s the “Cradle of Coaches,” but it has produced only one NFL player in recent memory? (And no, the vast majority of sports programs don’t make money–they consume it.) Why does higher ed agree to run a free double- and triple-A league for the NBA and the NFL? MLB and the NHL have done just fine, thank you very much, without this kind of welfare giveaway. Continue reading →